I just found out that a previous patient of mine (an 11 year old kid) died from his leukemia, and also a good friend of many years has cancer.

How's that for holiday cheer?

That's pretty shitty, dude. The kid, obviously you couldn't do anything more than you did. Your friend, I consider it an excuse to be even more merry around him/her. Hopefully though it's treatable and s/he will live a long number of years regardless.

In still sucky, though less depressing news, I feel sick. Money that was supposed to come in for the holidays hasn't arrived yet, and i've put off shopping for so long because of it that I am essentially doing all my shopping in an hour from now. I am pretty unhappy about it, and am sure this christmas is going to be one of my more miserable experiences.

Well, I borrowed the heat gun from work today to try and fix my PS3 again. This time I did it for a lot longer than the first time and I also added some Kester 951 flux so hopefully the fix will last longer than a day. I'll keep my fingers crossed...

Edit: Passed the first test, it boots again. It's still half-unassembled so I'll see how much I want to reassemble it before trying long-term...

Edit 2: Things are looking good. Everything is working right and I put the case back together. Played some games on it a bit and there weren't any problems. Looks like the YLOD really was fixed, just a question of how long it lasts now.

Back to work. It was rough getting up at 5:30 after sleeping in for 10 days. Still, it's kind of nice to be back at my desk again. Plus, there's no kids here. My feakin' window is still covered with plywood. I'm glad my happiness is so darn important. Probably be another week before it's fixed. Whatever. First World Problems, right?

Been a couple days now and my resurrected-from-a-YLOD PS3 is still going. Played some Tales of Graces f this evening and got past the part it crashed on when my problems all started. Very satisfying feeling.

I guess I can never been sure if it's going to die again, but damn if it ain't looking promising. And in theory at least if the solder reflow did a good job it ought to be good for a while.